Health Canada this week announced significant revisions to its national cannabis industry regulations, including changes to rules that govern licensing, production, packaging and labelling, security, and record keeping, according to analysis by StratCann.

The new rules, published Wednesday in the federal government’s Canada Gazette, are aimed at addressing industry concerns while maintaining a strict focus on public health, according to StratCann.

The rule changes are also forecast to save Canadian marijuana companies C$42.1 million in annualized value, according to a federal estimate, or C$295.1 million over 10 periods.

Some of the regulatory change highlights include:

• Increased cultivation canopy for micro licenses, to 800 square meters from 200, and for nurseries to 200 square meters from 50.
• Increased manufacturing capacity limits for producers, to 2,400 kilograms from 600 kilograms of dried cannabis.
• Elimination of a one-gram limit for pre-rolled joints.
• Allowing co-packing of “multiple discreet 10 milligram THC cannabis edibles” in a single package.
• Allowing QR codes on cannabis product labels for consumer information.

The new rules also will likely save cannabis companies a good deal of time by eliminating record keeping for a host of prior operations, including the processing and destruction of cannabis waste. For instance, licensees will no longer be required to report to the government the “address of the location at which the cannabis is destroyed and the description of the destruction method,” StratCann noted.

The rule changes went into effect March 12.